Step 6: Marry Fish to Rice

Step 7: A final note

For everyone who has concerns about the safety of eating raw fish: There's good stuff and bad stuff about it. If you're pregnant or nursing, don't d...

You can enjoy nigiri sushi at home with these simply tips to make your own sushi! Of course, there is something extraordinary about sushi made by a professional sushi chef. However, there is a very simple method for anyone to make delicious sushi at home.
It all depends on your quality of fish (or veg) and one easy technique for forming the rice (that I'm going to show you).
Other than that, you can customize your nigiri to your heart's content. It certainly doesn't need to be limited to raw fish - steamed fish, tofu, vegetables, and even other meats make for great sushi. I've even seen BBQ chicken nigiri on a menu. So don't let your fear of making sushi stop you any longer.

Step 1: Ingredients

Use whatever sashimi-grade fish you can get your hands on that suits your taste.

It's not easy to find sashimi-grade fish unless you live near a Japanese market.
Most supermarkets and fishmongers will not carry this grade of fish.
Some grocers will care "sushi grade" fish, which has undergone deep freezing, intended to kill bacteria.

If you aren't fortunate enough to live somewhere that sashimi grade fish is available, either cook your fish or research more on the freezing process to remove parasites.

You can also purchase sashimi grade fish online. Here's just one highly reputable vendor for example: Catalina Offshore. They even carry some harder-to-find items, like abalone, uni, and monkfish liver!

I used:

Maguro (tuna)

Hirame (fluke or halibut)

Hamachi (yellowtail or amberjack)

Tamago (sweet omelet)

You'll also need to prepare sushi rice:

Short grain rice - white or brown

Rice Vinegar

Salt

Sugar

Additional ingredients include:

Wasabi

Soy Sauce

Optional ingredients include:

Nori (seaweed sheets) (typically used, but I don't like it, so I didn't use it)

You can always checkout http://www.sushinut.com to find sushi grade fish to be shipped to your house. They offer lower shipping charges than Catalina, and have a lot of the same products. If you order over $119, you get free overnight shipping.

slicing sushi has it unique cutting technique basically there are three cutting technique.The most common one is place the knife on the left side of the fish fillet and slice down to the right side in one cut,when you are slicing it drag the knife a little.

Tamago (as it is commonly refered to in Japanese restaurants) is also my daughters favourite. After some trying I got it to a level which my daughter claims is just as good as in the better restaurants and even better than some others ;-)

You can indeed make it any good frying pan, I have been doing it for a couple of years. But I recently got a real Japanese tamago square pan for my 42,5 birthday. And I must say it does make difference. I even managed to make a 10 egg tamago roll without it breaking up or losing its regular shape. If it is your favourite type of sushi, spread around it is on your wish list!

I love sushi and love to make it myself. I have even been given a couple of workshops to teach friends how to make it. It is great fun.

I like the fact that you keep it simple. Cooking books on Japanese cuisine tend to overcomplicate things and while it might be tricky to duplicate a real sushi chef it is not hard to make very tasty stuff that comes quite close to the original.

What I do want to share on making it easier is the following: use sushi rice! It really makes a difference. With that I mean rice that is sold to be used in sushi. You can find it in Delhaize and some other general supermarkets. Follow the instructions on the package for the amount of water and cooking time. Really simple

I have tried other sticky rice, but that did not give the the right stickiness and taste. And although I generaly prefer brown:whole rice, I wouldn’t know how to get it sticky enough.

Pretty good guide for a beginer to follow. I've been working at a sushi resturaunt (Not an amazing one I'll admit, but your not going to get sick there) for the last 4 months now. There are some other things, like cutting you could probably do an entire turorial on, but I like it none the less.

Nice and clear tutorial! However, I want to comment on sashimi versus sushi "grade" fish. All fish intended to be consumed raw must be deep frozen: http://www.fda.gov/Food/ResourcesForYou/Consumers/ucm077331.htm The so-called grading is inconsistent and more marketing than anything.

I was surprised when I first learned this, but essentially most so-called "fresh" fish in the U.S. have been flash-frozen. Disappointing to some, but consider that many fish--wild salmon for example--have parasites which can be transferred to humans during raw consumption unless the flesh is frozen, first.

In Canada as well. 'deep frozen' in my earlier comment should have read flash frozen.. Thanks for the link :)

I generally don`t serve raw fish when making sushi for others at home to avoid any problems. There are a wide variety of cold and hot smoked fish available as well as some delicacies like smoked eel which make for excellent "safe" sushi :)

sushi grade fish in Canada must be deep frozen ( less than or equal to -40 degrees celcius) for 3 weeks before it can be sold as sushi grade.

no your home freezer will not do this...

The boats that deep sea fishermen use often deep freeze the fish while out fishing... so if you buy direct from them the fish will already be deep frozen, you can ask for how long.

Tuna is the only fish that can be eaten raw straight out of the water, although cutting it is a nightmare if it is not frozen.. thus Tuna is frozen and then slowly thawed out just enough to cut into sections then re-frozen in strips until needed.

But if you can buy a tuna steak somewhere it is likely ok to eat raw, depending on how much you trust the person selling it to have kept it out of contact with anything that may contaminate it (ie other fish.)

rice shaping is a technique that takes a lot of time to learn to do properly, it will take to much time to explain so I`ll take some pictures the next time I make sushi.

It involves doing a lot of the job with one hand and only uses the other hand for final touches.

while preparing the rice the piece of fish is picked up in the other hand and dangled over the inside of the fingers held between the thumb and index finger. Wasabi is applied with the tip of a finger of the opposite hand (the one with the rice) and then the rice is pressed into the fish the fingers giving it a nice convex shape. The nigiri is then held lenthwise between the thumb and index fingers and the fish is smothed out and beutified before being arranged on the serving plate.

when cutting fish for nigiri I recommend lightly placing your fingers on top of the piece or are cutting off and slicing a thin strip diagonally with the blade at about a 15 degree angle to the cutting surface.

similar to your third photo but flip the fish around and place your fingers on the piece you are cutting off.

cutting fish requires an extremely sharp knife, high carbon steel and not stainless steel are best as they can be sharpened easier to a finer quality edge. A knife that is not sharp enough will stick in the fish or even tear instead of cutting, it will also cause problems when cutting rolled sushi as it will not cut the nori properly.

I rince my rice 3 times while lightly scrubbing it between my hands under running water and use a rice cooker. Uncoated aluminum inserts are best for rice cookers as they are less likely to burn the rice but mine is a coated version and works fine. Water measurement in the rice cooker takes some getting used to as it involves measuring the amount of water above the level of the rice. It is basically the distance from the tip of your index finger to your first nuckle but it depends on each individuals finger. I let the rice sit in the rice cooker set at warm for 30 minutes or more after the cooking cycle has finished to help remove exess moisture.

cooling the rice is very important and I use rubbermaid bins to divide the rice into two equal parts, breaking it up and spreading it out in order to cool it faster. I also place the containers under my stove top fan.

Once the rice has cooled (still warm but no longer steaming) I add a mixture of rice wine vinegar and mirin (1 tablespoon mirin to 1 cup rice wine vinegar.) I never use salt, butter or sugar.

your ratio of 1/3rd of a cup of liquid to 3 cups rice is probably fine, I always go by feel and taste adding a little at a time by sprinkling the liquid over the rice and then mixing it and letting it cool more before tasting.

Isn't it requirement to serve sushi/sashimi at no higher than 40 degree F, and if the dish does not meet this requirement should be rejected at a restaurant - i.e. respectable restaurants would adhere to this requirement, but how would a person ordering at a restaurant politely be able to bring up the issue and verify it with the restaurant?

Making such a dish at home should probably include testing this requirement to be on the safe side - shouldn't it? What food thermometer is appropriate?

;p~~~~~ I just noticed my shoes are wet with all my drool. I love this stuff, and it is fun to make even with the wraps. I always make them too big, then end up peeling the fish off the rice and eating them seperately... but there's another name for the fish alone that I forgot. ;p~~~~~

I would recommend checking out that tamago link for a really tight presentation on it. Otherwise, I just kept the heat pretty low, which I usually do for cooking eggs. Keeps them from getting dried out too fast, but you have to be patient!